Samsung Now Producing 256 GB SSDs

Remember back in May when Samsung announced it would be launching 256 GB solid state drives? Samsung had originally planning to launch the drives in September, but today Samsung made good on the promise, announcing it has started production on the units, meaning they should start appearing as options for both notebook and desktop PCs in the near future—although we don’t think they’ll be cheap.

“While SSD’s have always been touted for their performance, Samsung is turning the storage industry upside down now with an SSD that delivers truly disruptive performance,” said Samsung Semiconductor VP for memory marketing Jim Elliott, in a statement. “Getting our exceptionally high performing 256GB SSD in a notebook is analogous to having a 15,000 rpm drive, without all of its size, noise, power, and heating drawbacks.”

The 2356 SSD offers more than double the performance of the company’s 64 and 128 GB SSD offerings, with sequential read rates of 220 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 200 MB/s. Erase cycles run at 100 GB per minute, making it faster to rewrite the entire drive. The improved performance is due to an optimized, single-platform chip controller, NAND flash, and special drive firmware developed by Samsung. The drive consumers just 1.1 Watts—roughly half the power consumption of a typical hard disk drive—and retains the standard 2.5-inch, 9.5mm form factor so it can act as a drop-in substitute for traditional hard drives.

Samsung will also offer a version of the drive with optional proprietary full-disk encryption, aimed at enterprise and government markets.